DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg on Gaining Traction and Knowing When to Pivot

The first day you're working on product, you should also be trying to sell that product.

Do you want to impact the world and still turn a profit? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to Growth Everywhere. This is the show where you'll find real conversations with real entrepreneurs. They'll share everything from their biggest struggle to the exact strategies they use on a daily basis. So if you're ready for a value-packed interview, listen on. Here's your host, Eric Siu.

Hey everyone, just a quick heads up that we're giving away an ebook called 29 Growth Hacking Quick Wins. We co-authored this book with Matan Griffel of One Month, and it'll give you a solid base on where you can create growth ideas from. So all you need to do is text QUICKTIPS to 33444. That's the word quick, Q-U-I-C-K, and tips, T-I-P, S as in sugar, 2-3-3-4-4-4, and you get instant access. All right everyone, we have Gabriel Weinberg, who is one of the co-authors of the book Traction and actually was on the show previously. So he's our first second guest, and he's also the CEO of the search engine DuckDuckGo. So, um, from the first time around, you know, Traction the book sold about 35,000 copies, which I consider a great success. Um, And now they're trying to do some different things and Gabriel has come back and has some new things to add to the show overall. So Gabe, how's it going?

Thanks for having me back. It's a pleasure to be the first repeated guest.

Pleasure to have you. So yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit, you know, for those that don't know you already, why don't you kind of give us a reminder about, you know, who you are and then your business a little bit and then, you know, continue on.

Sure. So I'm one of these people who started doing startups right out of college. And now I'm 35, so that's about 15 years. Oh, I'm 36. Oh my goodness. And so I started some companies that failed, but then had one that kind of was a success and sold it in 2006. And then a year later started working on DuckDuckGo, which is a search engine that doesn't track you. And I've been working on that ever since for about now about 8 years. We've grown substantially over time. When we first started, our initial traction I was excited about was 10,000 searches a month, and now we're at 300 million. So obviously, that's a huge growth. But even with all that, we're still a tiny piece of the market, and we've had to rethink about how we get traction time and time again. Independently of that, I wrote this book that you mentioned, which I'd love to talk about, and I do angel investing. So I've invested in about a dozen startups over the past 5 years.

Got it.

Okay.

Yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit about how DuckDuckGo is going? I mean, are there any numbers you can share? I know you just shared the 300 million. Is there anything else you can share around that?

That's the main number we share. The other thing I can share that we're kind of excited about is last year we got included in major browsers finally as a default search option. So Mozilla added us to Firefox and Apple added us to Safari on iPhone and OS X. So if you have an iPhone, You can go into Safari settings and you can see us right along with Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which is pretty cool.

Awesome. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about— let's talk about traction. I mean, can you kind of give us the framework that you've put around the book initially and then we'll continue on from there?

Yeah. So I set out originally to write this book in 2009, so a long time ago when DuckDuckGo was starting to get traction and I was truly trying to get it to the next level. And I went out there looking for a framework to get traction. for this book and it did not exist. And so that really compelled me to write it. And years of research and interviewing later, we pulled out this framework, which in essence is very simple, but it took a long time to get to. It's called Bullseye. And the reason why is it uses a bullseye target metaphor. And in the outer circle are all the marketing channels that you can possibly use. And we enumerate 19 in the book. And those are like SEO, search engine marketing, trade shows, there's literally 19 of these, and they're really catch-all in the sense that these are all the ways businesses really get traction. And you're trying to find, you know, the one that is going to make— meet your traction goal in the time period you want to meet your goal. And the framework is designed to whittle it down to that one through a 3-step process of brainstorming the 19 channels, then doing testing on 3 at a time, and then doubling down on the one that is working.

Got it. Okay. So, you know, something really interesting about traction, you know, I know Jason Lemkin from SaaStr says that, you know, as long as you have 10 non-family and friends as customers, you have something that's worthwhile. You know, do you have, you know, what's your, what are your thoughts around that?

So that's an interesting question that comes up a lot. Like, at the very beginning, should you pivot or not, right? And people ask me this a lot, and I kind of agree. To an extent. So the first thing I say when people ask me if they should pivot or not is look for real product engagement. And you have to be real to yourself at that point. Are these people, like you said, non-family and friends? But even that, are they really using the product? Do they really get value out of that? The best way to figure that out is to go talk to them. And supposing that they are, I would call that a bright spot. Look at the bright spots among your users, people who have tried it out, Supposing that you find those 10 people, then the question becomes, okay, is there really a business there? Like, are those 10 people just outlying weirdos? Or are they a real market that you can grow on? And is that market large enough to achieve your goals? But I think if you don't have that engagement, then you have a problem.

Got it. You know what's really interesting? I mean, looking at, you know, a lot of— there are a lot of people doing courses now. You see a lot of Facebook ads and people are doing courses. They're doing a lot of webinars and things like that and it seems like everybody's kind of jumping around this. And to me, I mean, what's a really long-term sustainable business is something more like a DuckDuckGo or like a software as a service type product where it's just kind of self-sustaining and it scales on its own. So for a lot of people, I get a lot of people coming to me, they said they're doing courses and things like that and they get 10 to 15 customers and then after that, They just kind of throw in the towel. I mean, what would you say to these people?

So I would say a number of things. The first thing I'd say is general advice I have for startups is you have to approach it from a career path and not a one-and-done mentality. If you just have a good idea and you're like, okay, I think that idea is good, I'm going to try that for a little bit, and if it doesn't work, I'm going to give up, that's just like a recipe for failure. For a number of reasons. One, you're not really invested in it. And 2, most initial startups do fail. And so you really have to be in it in the long term to invest skills. And probably your second, maybe, or even third business is going to be successful, really successful, like DuckDuckGo is for me. So that's kind of my overriding advice there is think about what you're working on and do you really want to do that for the next 10 years? Because that's how long these things really take.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, startups are typically, you read everywhere, it's a 7 to 10 year journey and you have to be willing to put in the time. So I think that's actually a good qualifier. Am I willing to go all in on this and put my life behind this for the next 7 to 10 years? Otherwise, if it's just like a one-shot thing where I'm kind of iffy about and it's more like a side hustle, it's probably not worth doing, right? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, that's it. So I've made that mistake several times, including my last company, which ultimately was successful. But I was not in it for a decade. You know, and it's really challenging when there's something in front of you. Like you said, those first 10 customers come in, you're like, wow, I'm making money on this. This is going well. But you have to really be real with yourself and be like, okay, is this the business I really want to be in for a decade? Because if not, it's probably not the right thing. Right, right.

Okay. So I think something you wanted to touch upon was the 4 mistakes of people trying to get traction. Can you go over those?

Yeah. I mean, let's dig into this. Basically, it's the framework, the 3-step framework, and each one of those has an issue where people kind of get tripped up. And the first one is almost really step 0. So step 0 is you need a traction goal. And that means when you set out to go get traction, you need to know how much traction to get you want to get, or you can't really evaluate anything. And usually that goal is when you're starting out, some amount of customers to get to profitability or to raise financing. And you can really translate that into hard numbers. And so you can say, I need to make $5,000 a month, and because my product sells for $1,000 a month, that's 5 customers. I have to get to 5 customers, and then you can back out from there. But one thing that people definitely mess up is they don't start out with a goal. First of all, all these mistakes I have also personally made, just to be clear. But yeah, so that's number one is people not coming with a goal. And honestly, I don't even know if I'm including that in the 4. That's like even a precursor one to everything.

Okay.

The second one is People do not start traction early enough, and this people really get tripped up at. And the way to see this the easiest is to think of the leaky bucket metaphor. So your product is a bucket and it has holes in it when you start because you're just getting started and it's not the perfect product and customers are leaking out. And so when people think about getting traction, they think, I got to wait until I have my product ready to launch, till I plug these holes, because if I pour customers in the top, and customers are usually money, it's just going to flow out and I'm wasting time and effort. And so that's the intuitive response, and that's what mainly people do. Unfortunately, that is the wrong approach because what happens is if you don't have a cold stream of customers coming through, through some little traction efforts, it doesn't have to cost a lot, but some amount where you're getting people in the door day by day, you cannot really tell where the holes are in your product. And so what people do is they get a beta customer list and they say, okay, those people will tell me where the holes are. But those people are too close to you. And as you evolve your product, they're framed with what they saw before, whereas new people coming in are really seeing it for the first time and they're getting that first impression. And without those first impressions, you really can't tell. And so what generally happens is, is people launch and then they realize that Whoa, I have a bunch of other holes, and they got to do 2 more product development cycles. Whereas if they started doing traction right from the beginning and were getting a steady stream of customers, when they launch, they can actually hit the ground running. And moreover, if they were doing the testing right, they know what channel to go after, they know what niche to go after, and they know what messaging to use. So the short version is not starting traction early enough.

Hmm. So does this If I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like a more get started, like a ready, fire, aim approach first to just get going, to get to traction first, get going to get to traction.

Yeah, I mean, you should start— I mean, I perceive you should start this framework or any framework on traction right when you start product development, which means running tests, say, in any of these channels, say it's AdWords or Facebook ads or Any of these 19, maybe it's just going out to meetup groups and talking to people and trying to sell them on your product right from the beginning, and you should be spending half your time on it. In the book, we really argue strongly for 50%, called the 50% rule, where you spend 50% of your time on traction. And so literally the first day you're working on product, you should also be trying to sell that product, and that'll help you really launch the right product.

And are there any types of tools that you recommend to, you know, track this Track traction, I guess?

That's a great question. You know, I've been using spreadsheets my whole life, and that's probably the wrong answer. I bet there's something better out there, but that's what I use. Got it.

Okay, great. So what is the— let's go into the 3rd pillar, or let's call it the 3rd, yeah, the 3rd mistake type.

Yeah, I've lost count at this point. Exactly. Already. But the next one is related to step 1. So step 1 in the framework is really brainstorming, or we're calling it now the outer ring of the bullseye. And that's where you go through all the channels and you come up with real tests that you can run in each of the channels to think about getting traction. You're not actually running them yet, you're just brainstorming. And the thing that people mess up here is they don't look at all the channels. They think that because they're in SaaS or they're in an offline retail location or whatever their business is, that only channels that their competitors are using are the ones that they should be using. And that's intuitive because you look at other people that are successful and you're like, oh, well, I should probably use that. But that's also generally wrong because those channels are competitive for a reason. Everyone's using them. And so the prices have been bid up and the click-through rates are generally low. Whereas the underutilized channels, you know, the other ones that no one is using, your competition, are often the greenfield areas where you can get amazing conversions and you can differentiate from your competition. And so really the mistake is not considering all channels when doing that brainstorming step. And I don't know how many times I can tell you, like, people just— that's the number one question I get from the book is like, well, why didn't you just tell us what channels are good for B2B or consumer? And I'm like, You're not getting it. You got to look at the ones specifically that are underutilized for you. I can tell you some good stories if you like from the book, but that's the core thing is look at underutilized channels.

Let's hear a story.

Yeah.

So one I like is WP Engine, and they're a WordPress hosting company. Very competitive market. It's not that difficult to start a WordPress hosting company, and so there's a lot of them. And they mainly compete— that industry competes off of search engine ads and things like that. And they've been very successful and had got traction early on through 2 stages in 2 different channels that were totally underutilized for the industry. One is offline ads. So everyone thinks you're an online business, you got to go online. Even offline businesses are now mainly focus on online. But they went the other direction and advertised in magazines and things like that where no one else was advertising and found great conversions to small business owners and things like that. The second thing they did was use another channel we had to name in the book called engineering as marketing because so few people use it, which is taking your precious product development resources— this is why this one is so non-intuitive— and applying it to marketing. And in particular, what you do is you make another site That's not your main site on a whole different domain that does something free and useful for a wide swath of users that is somewhat complementary to your main product. And so what they did was made a WordPress speed tester for their site, for any WordPress site where you could go on and test your site and it would give you recommendations of how to improve it. And they could then use that as a funnel for their hosting. And both of those strategies were great. I mean, no one was using them.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. This reminds me, I mean, it's, I think sometimes you have to go to the places that just don't make any, or people aren't tapping into, and that's where you kind of just go all in. I remember my, you know, my Treehouse days using YouTube advertising. Nobody was doing it. And even right now in the education space, not a lot of people are going all in on it. And that was a massive driver of growth for us. So I think it's interesting that you said, okay, so WP Engine, You said they did magazine ads and what was the other one?

And they built a whole other site that wasn't even their main product. We call it engineering as marketing.

Got it. Okay, interesting. Okay, so that's the third pillar, finding an underutilized channel. And then I guess, you know, also I guess at the same time you have to look at your competitors too. What would your methodology be for finding an underutilized channel? Do you have any process for that?

Yeah, I mean, so there's 2 things we suggest. One is literally going through each channel and forcing yourself to brainstorm a test that you could run in that channel that would be interesting. So you look at offline ads and you think, what would I do if I were going to run a magazine ad or a billboard or something like that? Or you look at speaking engagements and you think, you know, what audience If I could speak in front of an audience, what audience would move the needle for me? And you force yourself to actually brainstorm in each channel and come up with a viable test. Sometimes hard to do for people, but that's really what you should be doing. The other way to jumpstart that is, this is kind of the best tactic that I don't think enough people do, is go talk to other founders who have failed at what you did, who had had a previous startup who are now out of business or got acquired or are currently in a very related business that isn't directly competitive. And those people love to talk. They love to talk about— founders love to talk about their stories. They'd be happy to talk to you. They'll tell you everything that they tried marketing-wise, why or why it did not work. And oftentimes things that didn't work 5 years ago may work now, or it might spark a A thought that you could tweak what they did. So that's another great way to kind of find ideas, often interesting ideas.

Interesting. How do you find these founders that have failed in your niche?

So you look at AngelList, Crunchbase, and you look at the tags that were tagged with startups in your niche, and then you go back in history. And it's actually a pretty sad exercise when you realize how many startups die. But it's really easy to do that. The other way to do it is not just by tag of industry, but like look at shared investors, because often investors invest in similar things. But it's actually not that hard to find if you look on AngelList and Crunchbase now.

You know, there's— you just reminded me right now, I was looking at Product Hunt a couple of weeks ago and they did have this, I think it was like startup graveyard or something.

Oh yeah, yes, I saw that too.

Yeah, and that was really good.

There's like a list of these startups that have failed, why they failed, and all that. I'm going to see if I can dig it back up and drop it in the show notes if I can. But okay, that's interesting. Another point, you know, we do have a lot of clients in the startup world, you know, based on the agency that I run. They reach out and they say, okay, you know, we have this $5,000 budget that we can test for this channel, and that's it. It's almost like an arbitrary number that they set up, almost all of them. It's always, hey, we have this $5,000 budget that we can test. It seems like, you know, that's all they're willing to lose, you know, for each channel as a test. I mean, you know, from my perspective, that seems like it's, you know, it's— if you get any ounce of traction in that $5,000 and you run through that budget, I don't think you just stop. I think you just, you know, you push it even further. But sometimes they just tend to stop even when they do get traction. So, you know, what's your take on that?

Yeah, I mean, you're hitting upon kind of Kind of the last step and why, how people mess that up. I think you're exactly right to focus on that, not doubling down when something's working. So I mean, if you do run tests and something actually worked, and to be clear, to back up a little bit, the framework I like for running a test should be to really answer 3 things. One is, how many customers do you think I can get from this channel? Kind of how scalable really is it? Does it cost to acquire a customer in that channel? And 3, are those the right customers that I want right now demographically, or do they convert well and stick around and engage? And so let's say you run the test and you have your traction goal already. You did that well and you say, I need to get to 1,000 customers and I see that this channel can easily get me to 1,000 customers, maybe 10,000, and the money works out. At that point, I think you should pretty much drop everything and double down on that channel. And what people don't do is that. What people do instead is they say, oh, I ran 3 or 4 tests and they were all mildly successful, and so I'm gonna split my time and traction effort among them. And that's generally a bad move because any major growth trajectory phase of a startup is usually powered by one channel.

Yeah.

And if you can see that channel from the test, you should just drop everything else, focus on that channel for 2 reasons. One, that money is just better spent in that channel. You already proved that it's better than the rest. And 2, only by focusing on it can you uncover the underutilized tactics within it. So you mentioned YouTube ads earlier. Let's say you ran a YouTube ad experiment and it was kind of working for you. You decided to double down on it. Now your goal is to find the new YouTube ad tactics that are cutting edge in YouTube ads, which I'm sure there are a bunch. I honestly don't know too much about YouTube, the cutting edge YouTube ads at the moment. Maybe you do. But like if you take Facebook ads, for example, video is now hotter in Facebook ads at the moment, and that's a place I would be if I were in Facebook ads. And so you not only want to find underutilized channels, but you want to find underutilized strategies. The only way you can do that is if you double down and focus. And so people who don't focus once they know something is working, I think are doing the wrong thing, to your point.

Got it. Okay. Yeah, I think that makes total sense. Now, I want to jump into— jump back to your book launch. So I guess, what did you learn from the first book launch?

So, I mean, there were a couple of things we did. One is we totally ran the Traction framework on Traction and got traction for Traction, so to speak. And we ran a bunch of tests in these channels and we actually found that podcasts like yours drove the most engagement with the book. And quite honestly, that's why I ended up contacting you again, because I want to come and talk about it again. And so we're focused again on that channel the second time around. So one thing I learned was follow the framework. It does work. The second thing I learned was we spent a lot of time writing it. It was something like an MVP in the sense that we didn't have a ton of people. We had early readers to give feedback, but we didn't have 35,000 people read it beforehand. And so almost immediately when we launched it, we started getting this feedback of ways people were kind of misinterpreting it or Or still kind of messing up getting traction. And that's why we did this rewrite, is to focus on these things people are getting wrong that we're talking about. So when people read it now for the second edition, they really get it. And then we added a couple things. So one thing we realized was people didn't know how to run— think about running cheap tests in all the channels. So we added an addendum of testing ideas. So for each channel, it gives you 2 or 3 ideas of how you might run a A relatively cheap test of like a month or $1,000 time to really think about that channel a little more deeply.

Got it. Okay. So you're picking up a publisher now too. I wanted to dig into that a little bit. Why'd you decide to pick up a publisher?

Yeah. So we looked at the book and the book launch was successful and I learned a lot about books. in this whole process, as you might imagine. And so stop me if I get too deep into this, but basically what we learned is people who have— so most books have a kind of a pop and then they sell most of their copies in the first few weeks and then it dies down almost to zero. There are a few books that are really evergreen that end up being very useful, get recommended around in kind of a viral way. And luckily, our book is like that. And we stopped pretty much all marketing efforts and still sold way more copies than we did in the first few weeks over the next many months. And so we realized we had that. That said, those evergreen books, to really get the word out about your idea, the main authors on them, they're going around constantly talking all the time and doing speeches and conferences and stuff. And both of us are running startups, and so we don't have time to do that. At the same time, we also wanted to get it in bookstores, and that's a lot of work if you're self-publishing, which is why initially it was just on Amazon. So we thought we could do what we're doing now, just continue to focus on email, do occasional podcasts. We continue selling some of the book, but to really take it to the next level, because neither of us have a ton of time to put into all that groundwork, we would need to partner with some major publisher to make that happen. And so we decided to say, we're gonna see what that looks like. And I got a— I luckily got a nice agent who was perfect and, you know, helped us talk with these publishers. And then it just felt like the right fit with Penguin.

Got it. How do you go about finding, you know, a good agent to talk to if you're trying to go down the publisher route?

I'm going to tell you, I probably don't have good advice for that. What happened to me is I had gotten connected locally to a pretty decent author, Michael Port, who is a bestselling business author. And he offered to introduce me to his agent who also happened to be the agent for Tim Ferriss and a few other people. And he just ended up being the right agent and was willing to take us on and then did. My story is not going to be useful to anyone else, I don't think.

No, I think there's something there because you look at somebody that's already done a successful book and I think you asked them. And I think the key is to just reach out to people, a few people that you think have done well with it and then hopefully get a few intros, right?

Yeah, I think you're right.

And he was— yeah, taking that— I think you're absolutely right. Taking that a little more further, I mean, he was local to me. So you probably do have bestselling authors in your niche, relatively local, you could go meet pretty easily. Yeah, we did it. We asked around. Incidentally, independently, another way to do it now that I'm thinking back through this. So we got traction, retraction book, and then I wrote it up, exactly what we did, how we applied the framework. It's like a blog post on Medium. And the blog post itself got some traction and I got contacted It got sent around kind of the book world, and then I got contacted by an editor who ended up being our editor. And it all happened about the same time. So that was another way. I think the book world is kind of small. And so if you self-publish a book and get traction with it, that's probably a much quicker way to get a publisher on board.

Got it. Okay. So it sounds like the goal of the publisher is to get an even bigger pop. This time, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So they're gonna get it in bookstores and they helped us. They know more about getting a bigger pop.

Cool. Awesome. Yeah. Really excited to see the second version of the book coming out. And I hope, I mean, 35,000 is a huge win already. Hopefully you get to like a million or something, then we can talk about how you got to a million. But just switching gears a little bit, I'm really interested. I mean, you have the search engine, you have this book Traction. How does Gabriel structure his day?

That is a good question. I also have 2 young kids, so my day is mainly focused around DuckDuckGo and family. And then I've tried to use all my extra time on this Traction project and angel investing. And that sounds like a ridiculous amount of work, and it probably is. I don't know if I have a great answer for you. I try to be super efficient with my time is probably the answer. And I'm really real with myself whether I'm being productive or not.

Got it. So are you getting up, I mean, are you waking up early in the morning? Do you have any specific rituals?

I'm a very ritualistic person. Yeah, I get up pretty much around 6 every day. I always take a shower in the morning, usually exercise. Drive my youngest son into school, come to the office. I'm at the office like pretty much the same time every day from like 8:10 to 4:20. Then I'm home, I'm hanging out with the kids for a few hours, and then I'm back to work for a few hours. Got it.

Okay. That's good structure. What is— what's the most useful purchase you've made in the last 3 months? Hmm.

Probably the Apple Watch, in all honesty.

Really?

Yeah. I have been wearing— is it 3 months? It's close enough, whatever. Yeah. I mean, so every use case of the Apple Watch sounds— it's hard to talk about because it's not like a killer use case. It's just like a bunch of little things that improve your life a little bit. But for me, like you were talking about earlier with productivity, is very important to me. So I found myself looking on my phone too much, like a lot of people do, and the Apple Watch has really cut that down. So I got the notifications tweaked really well, and so I feel like any of the major things I was doing on my phone, I just get notified on the watch ad hoc. And so I'm really not checking my phone a lot, which has just kind of vastly improved my day.

Interesting.

Do you have to— I mean, I'm wearing a Fitbit right now, and it's annoying because I have to clean it every day. So when you go work out and all that, I mean, Do you wear the watch to work out or do you have to clean it?

Yeah, I've been doing the fitness thing with the watch and that's also a thing that I really like. I mean, I've been totally gamified with circles and I've been totally doing it every day, which I like. So I bought 2 bands and sometimes I don't change it, sometimes I do wear the sport band and it's like semi-waterproof. So what I do is I just go for a run or something and then I'll just wash it in cold water while I take a shower and then put it on and just run it under cold water every time. And that's really all I've been doing.

Got it.

And it hasn't gotten like weird.

Interesting. Yeah. I'm gonna wait for the next iteration, but you definitely turned me on more to it. Okay. What's one piece of advice you'd give to your 25-year-old self?

25 was an interesting time for me. I think that if I could go back even a couple years, I know that's probably in the spirit of the question, like 22 would be a little different. I think it would've been to do 2 things. One is if you're going to focus on an idea, focus on something that you really— we talked about this earlier— that you're really going to want to give a decade of your life to. And something you really care about. And 2, find some good mentor people who have already been there, done that in startup land. Maybe they've had an exit or something like that, and they can really keep it real with you and tell you when you're being an idiot, or at least question you on your assumptions. Those are the 2 things I kind of wish I did earlier.

How did you find a mentor?

So this is probably unhelpful to people too. I ended up really resting on my uncle who was kind of a serial CEO. But then when I moved to Philly, I mean, I basically spent 10 years on my own in startup land, not talking to anyone, which was really dumb. But then when I moved to Philly, I really got involved in the startup community. I have a lot of peer mentors, so I like that too. So I've set up several groups and now I'm in one that I really like of just kind of like peer CEOs, and we meet monthly and talk about our businesses. And that's been great. I mean, you really just want people to really dig into your assumptions and question you on your thinking and talk about your challenges. And I've just found them— the one through family, I can't replicate. The other is just talking to people and trying to navigate towards people who seem like they're really serious.

Right. I think having like-minded people around you and being able to talk to them is— people can call it group therapy. I mean, there's so many different groups, right? There's Young Entrepreneurs Council, Entrepreneurs Organization, YPO, and all these different things. Or you can put together peer groups like you've done. And I think it's massively helpful because you get perspective. From other people that otherwise, like if you're alone, you know, you're only going to be, you know, with yourself the whole time. You don't learn that much, right?

Yeah, as many of these groups there are, there's still, I'd say like I probably meet only 5% of people who are in one, you know, in Startupland. Like really everybody should be doing it.

Right, totally agree. Okay, great. So Gabe, this is awesome. What's the best way for people to find you online?

On Twitter, @yegg, Y-E-G-G, is my handle. Pretty responsive there.

Okay. YEG. And then also the search engine is duckduckgo.com, right?

That's right. And if you're looking for the book, you can get it at tractionbook.com.

All right. Awesome. Gabe, thanks so much for doing this.

Thank you.

Hey everyone, just a quick heads up that we're giving away an ebook called 29 Growth Hacking Quick Wins. We co-authored this book with Matan Griffel of One Month and It'll give you a solid base on where you can create growth ideas from. So, all you need to do is text QUICKTIPS to 33444. That's the word quick, Q-U-I-C-K, and tips, T-I-P-S as in sugar, to 33444 and you get instant access.

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